Yesterday (2012 July 5th), Shin-Shin, the female Giant Panda at Tokyo’s 上野動物園 (Ueno Zoo) gave birth to a baby.
The proud mother, Shin-Shin, in Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo.
(Photo from the Ueno Zoo website).
This is the first time that a panda has been born in a zoo in Japan in twenty-four years.
That means that the last time a panda was born here was in 1988…two years before I came to Japan.
So, this is big news and Ueno Zoo will surely be full of visitors hoping to see the baby panda.
Edited on 2012 July 12: It was announced that the newborn baby panda died of pneumonia yesterday.
So sad!
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Tokyo Five 
I just edited this post above with the news that the baby panda died yesterday. It’s too bad!
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Reblogged this on Okonomibloggy.
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Thank you!
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We’ve heard the controversy about the name for the panda.
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Yeah, Tokyo’s governor suggested naming the baby panda after the Japanese name for disputed territory between Japan and China.
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please show pics of the baby, when available. thanx.
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Actually I wanted to put a photo of the baay panda but the zoo’s website doesn’t have one, yet.
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Here a picture of the baby panda (which, by the way,it was announced is a “boy”) from the Ueno Zoo website:
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Never went to a zoo in Japan during my time there. Hm.
Is it that pandas don’t often breed in captivity, or they just haven’t been successful since 1988?
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You’ve never been to a zoo here? That’s too bad … there are so many nice ones!
And pandas are supposedly notoriously difficult to breed .
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